Page 131 of The Scot Beds His Wife
“Dammit, woman, let me apologize.” His hands tightened on her face, but not painfully.
She swept her lashes down. Could they not even make up without fighting? she wondered through a budding smile.
“I’m sorry, do go on.”
“I told ye that ye were nothing to me, and that was my biggest lie of all, bonny, because ye’ve become my reason for everything.”
Behind her ribs, her heart thudded and swelled. Andstill, she couldn’t trust this moment. This declaration. This reason to hope.
“But I—”
“I’ve come to take ye home.” His hands slid from her jaw, down the high neck of her gown, to clutch at her shoulders.
“But what about—”
“It’s been decided, lass. By all of us. Mother, Eammon, Callum, Liam, Mena… even Locryn and Calybrid, who somehow now reside in my castle. Ye belong at Inverthorne. Ye belong to me, and I’m here to fetch what’s mine.”
Her eyebrows dropped into a scowl. “A Highland proposal, is it? One half conceit, and one half brute force?”
“If that’s what it takes.” He quirked that arrogant smile down at her, the one she used to despise. And then had come to crave. To love. “Ye know once I set my cap at something, I’m rather relentless. Ye might as well surrender now, bonny, and agree to marry me.”
“Have you thought this through?” She wrenched out of his grip and turned to the window so as to gather her wits without his beauty and his brogue stealing them from her. “I’m still a wanted woman. I’m not safe in the Highlands anymore.” Her hand went to her stomach. “And then there’s the child I carry. The one that doesn’t belong to you. I know what I did was wrong, but I’d still not have my child raised a bastard.”
Even at her back, his charisma, height, and strength were undeniable. He moved closer, reaching around her stiff shoulders to place a document in her line of sight.
“Bonny Mackenzie?” she whispered, the official documents of birth and citizenship blurred as new tears threatened her vision. “You’ve given me a new identity?”
“My brother Dorian has a few men in his employ that are a deft hand at forgeries,” he said against her ear. “I realized I never quite accepted ye as Alison Ross, and I doona know ye as Samantha Masters. But ye’ve always been Bonny to me. It’s Bonny I fought and laughed with, and convinced to marry me, and bedded every night…”
He dropped his head to place a kiss in that vulnerable place behind her ear. The one that lifted all the hairs on her body, and created shivers of bliss that traveled all the way down to the apex of her thighs.
“It’s Bonny I couldna get enough of. It’s Bonny that I love.”
The word she’d craved to hear landed like a lead weight in her gut. Turning back she pressed the point that he’d not yet addressed. “But this child—”
A long finger pressed against her mouth, quieting her words, but not quite her fears. “My father made at least as many bastards as he had legitimate children. I witnessed the agony of his unwanted children, and I swear by all the gods of my home and people, that I’ll never see a child of yours, of ours, feel that kind of shame. If I love ye, I will love yer baby, and claim it as my own. And I vow this wee one will never know it isna of my body as much as it is of yours.”
Processing his declaration, she stared at him mutely, waiting for the hammer to fall. Waiting for the next words that would crush the hope and love surging to the surface.
People didn’t actually get happy endings, did they? Especially not people like her. The orphaned. The unwanted. The untruthful.
He took her mouth with his own, slanting his lips over hers, licking the salt of her tears from the seam with his velvety tongue.
She opened for him, accepted his possession, his love, and all the emotion he poured from his lips into hers. No longer was he the leisurely lover, the infamous rake. Thistime, his kiss conveyed a desperation she’d never felt from him before. A passion she’d not known him to be afflicted with.
Her response to it was instant and fierce. She threaded her fingers into his lush hair and turned her hands into fists, imprisoning him to the onslaught of her answering ardor. A lifetime of loneliness flared between them, fusing them to each other, offering what neither of them had ever been able to claim.
Belonging. He was hers. She was his. And neither of them would be alone again.
He groaned, then growled, crushing her to him, his hands everywhere, clutching and grabbing at the weight of her skirts.
She was so lost in his mouth, that she hadn’t realized he’d pushed her onto the seat and pulled up her skirts until he was moving against her. Thrusting inside of her.
Her body was ready for his intrusion, wet and warm, open and needy.
His possession brought her to life, warming the blood from ice in her veins. Lifting the weight of guilt and sorrow, turning it into a taut and frantic lust.
Their mouths remained fused, as their bodies found a rhythm that matched the frenzy of their need. He filled her completely, gliding against her thighs in slick, graceful motions that increased in frenetic speed until he was pounding into her.
